


Rosemary for Remembrance

by RobinLorin



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Aromantic, Episode Fix-it, Gen, Season Finale, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/pseuds/RobinLorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I do not believe Marguerite would willingly abandon me," says Anne. "Rochefort must have threatened her greatly, to force her to turn against me. ”</p><p>“Or someone she loves,” Constance says. “Does she have family in Paris? A lover?”</p><p>On reflex, Anne looks at Aramis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rosemary for Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr as part of the [Musketeers Ladies Appreciation Week](http://whyshouldmenhaveallthefun.tumblr.com/). Out of all the AUs I wanted for Marguerite, the simplest is the one in which her death is acknowledged in the season finale. 
> 
> The Aromantic tag is for Aramis; I've always read him as [akioromantic](http://aromantics.wikia.com/wiki/Lithromantic).

Rochefort’s last, rattling breath eases out of his lungs. His eyes stay fixed on Anne, and she fights a shudder as she imagines him watching her from the beyond, never ceasing in his chase.

Constance darts forward and grabs at Rochefort’s chest. Anne is shocked enough to lift her eyes from Rochefort’s empty stare. Constance shakes wet blood from a handful of ripped parchment.

“I saw your title,” she says to Anne, smoothing out the pieces on a windowsill. Her trembling fingers smear Rochefort’s blood across the stone; the brightening sunlight makes the blood look like ornamental paint.

A palace built on death and betrayal, Anne thinks, and she moves closer to share the sill with Constance.

“ _'I must confess, Rochefort’s allegations against the Queen are lies'_ …It's signed by Marguerite," Constance says breathlessly. "This is her hand. Wait! This part mentions Lemay!” Constance turns the pieces over, matching soggy fragments together.

“ _'I have been drawn into a greater conspiracy’_?” Anne’s finger hovers over the stained parchment; still, after all, she is not yet as brave as Constance. “What does she mean?”

“Rochefort held a trial,” Aramis says. He is staring at the floor, his face solidly gray. “A mockery of justice. He forced Marguerite to say that I -- to swear to treason.”

They all know what Rochefort’s claim was. Anne does not do it honor of mention.

“I hold Marguerite in highest esteem,” she says, hurt; and then she remembers to be sensible. “I do not believe Marguerite would willingly abandon me. He must have threatened her greatly, to force her to turn against me. ”

“Or someone she loves,” Constance says. “Does she have family in Paris? A lover?”

On reflex, Anne looks at Aramis.

It was evident, from Marguerite’s affection for their savior when Aramis freed them from that terrifying observatory, that Marguerite cared for Aramis. Anne did not know whether she had taken him as a lover; Anne had not wished to pry, had not allowed herself the luxury of entertaining jealousy. But even if she had not -- if he had stayed faithful to Anne, as she had to him in her heart, regardless of her duties as wife of the king – then he might be close enough to Marguerite to know of her attachments.

Aramis clears his throat. He continues to stare at the floor. “I… do not know. If she had any family in town.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Anne sees Porthos de Vallon rear his head back as if something has struck him. He looks at Aramis and parts his lips, but does not speak.

“We must find her,” Anne says firmly. The fatigue that has weighed her down since arriving at the abbey is waiting to drag her to the floor, but this one last flame of resolve holds fast. She will do this one thing, and then once she has reassured her friend that her tormentor is gone, she will go to the chambers she shares with the king and she will join him there and she will be queen as she should be.

Athos de la Fere inquires as to Marguerite’s bedchambers, and goes there to search within. He departs with a curt bow.

Constance squeezes Anne’s wrist. “I’ll find the dauphin. You stay here. I’ll help Marguerite get the baby all settled and then we’ll bring him up to you where it’s clean and quiet, alright?”

Anne nods, and Constance disappears down the hallway with a twist of her rustic half-skirts.

The hallway is very quiet in her wake. Anne declines Porthos’ offer to find a chair; she must stand as still and tall as she can, and be a pillar of truth and justice, until she can finally collapse in her bed.

Constance’s scream, sharp and shocked and quickly cut off, echoes through the empty marble halls.

The Musketeers jolt into action, but Anne is ahead of them all: Her foot makes a distinct splash as she steps over Rochefort, as if she has stepped into a puddle of rainwater. She does not heed it; only races down the corridor as quickly as her skirts will allow.

The dauphin squalls in his cradle angrily; Constance’s cry has woken him. He has slept all day, unaware of the commotion of the palace or that the cold body of his nurse lies on the plush carpet beneath his crib.

“Marguerite,” Anne whispers, and goes to her.

D’Artagnan tries to hold her back -- “Your Majesty, you shouldn’t --” but she ignores him and pushes past. She feels as unqueenly as she ever has, kneeling beside the empty husk of the second person she had thought was her friend. Her dress will have to be burned, and it is too bad; she is already wearing funeral colors.

There is an empty vial on the floor, just out of reach of Marguerite’s half-clenched hand. Her dress is so beautiful: dark blue, the one which Constance said looked like a night sky full of stars.

Marguerite’s face is twisted and horrible, as if caught in mid-choke, as if Marguerite had been gasping for air when she died. She looks pale, but not so much, and for a moment Anne hopes, bending closer to listen for a breath.

But Marguerite is utterly still. Her pallor is not unnatural because Marguerite has been this pale for weeks now. She has been floating in the background of each room like a ghost, veins showing dark at her eyes and wrists.

 _I hadn’t realized_ , she thinks. _I hadn’t thought – Marguerite is my_ friend. She feels betrayed, somehow; as if Marguerite has snubbed her. Hadn’t she known that Anne was a fair and kindly queen, and would help any person in need?

“Marguerite wouldn’t do this,” she says. “She would never – Rochefort must have forced to her write the letter and take this.” She picks up the vial and clutches it tightly.

“I didn’t know,” Constance says, and Anne tries to puzzle that out until realizing that Constance was not responding to her. Constance is staring at Marguerite’s prone form, rocking the dauphin in her arms and, in turn, supported by d’Artagnan. “She’s my friend. How could I not…?”

“Rochefort was a craftier beast by far,” Athos says. “He tricked us all. Marguerite included.”

“But she took her own life!” Constance says. “I thought she was ill, or worried about the situation with Spain – I didn’t know Rochefort had his claws in her!” D’Artagnan makes comforting noises and draws her further into his arms.

Anne stands. “I will not hear this. Marguerite could not have ended her own life so –- so –-”

\-- so obviously, so cruelly and painfully, without Anne noticing. She _can’t_ have been hurting so badly, because Anne would have noticed.

“If I may, Your Majesty,” says a voice at the door. The Musketeers whirl, hands on swords. Their stances only relax incrementally when they see the Red Guard at the door.

“Samuel, at your service, Your Majesty,” he says, saluting in a subdued fashion. He glances at the bod–- at Marguerite. “I was there when the traitor Rochefort found her.”

Samuel’s boots are stained around the seams. He must have seen Rochefort where he lay in the palace halls.

“Rochefort found her like this?” Anne demands.

“Yes, Your Majesty. He was angry. He tore up the note she left. I didn’t get a chance to read it. Oh –-” He's noticed the red-soaked pieces of paper Constance still holds in a fist as she rocks the dauphin. “I see, madame.”

“But why?” Anne asks. Desperation creeps into her voice. “Why would she take her own life? We were only hours away from returning and -–" _and killing Rochefort_ , she means to say, but the words will not come; it seems her heart still welcomes him as a friend, even as it marks him a foe.

“The Comte held a trial, Your Majesty. He called upon the lady Marguerite as a witness. I don't know how the Comte forced the lady to lie –-” the way his gaze flickers toward the distinctive Musketeer crest worn by the men standing beside the cradle, before he averts his eyes, betray that the palace gossip has informed him exactly what the accusations were -– “but he disgraced her in front of the entire court, and His Majesty too. Everyone was whispering about her when she came out, and she couldn’t look anyone in the eye. She came right back and and in another hour…”

He shrugs. “The Comte found her here and tore up her letter.”

Anne cannot speak. The room seems far away. Has she ever truly known this palace; has she really known her subjects? Her friends?

Marguerite haunted by Rochefort, discredited and disgraced in front of all of Paris… Abandoned by those whom she should have called friends and lover… Excluded from their plans when their secondary objective should have been to free Marguerite and restore her reputation… Left to suffer alone. 

This time, with effort, Anne does not look at Aramis.

She turns instead to Marguerite, again; bending down to smooth the hair away from her face.

“I will have to write her family,” she says. “Her father was sick. He lives in… He… Monsieur…”

She can’t remember Marguerite’s surname. She stares at her friend’s still form, her face as twisted and pained as her heart had been in her last few, tortured weeks of life. She refuses to look at the others until she has remembered Marguerite’s family name.

By the time it comes to her, Aramis has slipped from the room.

_Oh, Marguerite, I have failed you._

* * *

Aramis makes it halfway to the palace gates before he collapses: some unholy pressure bears down on him, forcing him to his knees in an awkward sideways slide.

She had been so pale. Her heartbeat had fluttered against the vein in her throat as she had twisted her neck to avoid his eyes. She mightn’t have bothered. He had been too busy avoiding hers.

“Before anyone gets hurt,” she had said, and Aramis should have noticed the trembling of her smile that should have betrayed her, if only --

But he _had_ noticed --

He had noticed -- he has these memories, doesn’t he, of the translucence of Marguerite’s (he chokes on her name), of her eyelids, the way she had clung to him before he had moved away, already looking past her, too willfully preoccupied. Too eager to leave so he could deny seeing with plausibility.

A stone plaque in the Cardinal’s wall.

Anne choking on Rochefort’s cord around her throat.

A woman both familiar and strange lying splayed and cold in an abbey’s cool, cider-spiced basement.

Aramis had noticed; he had seen. He had not tried to piece the parts together; had not bothered to look for clues.

Athos’ boots come to a stop in the dirt before Aramis. They stay there, firm and patient.

Aramis opens his mouth to explain it -- waiting in the rain for a woman who would never open her door; the wide liquid eyes of the dauphin finding _him_ , Aramis, across the entire room, finding Aramis out of all the courtiers and the king; the coarse pads of Anne’s fingertips, borne of the nervous habit of threading ribbons through her fingers, delicate on Aramis’ skin; the deep intoxication of romance, like honey cider and jasmine blooming in the summer; her hurt brown eyes after she’d said “I love you” and the panic in his chest, familiar after forty other women telling him the same but new this time, colored with the fear of being discovered; the same black-and-blue colors blooming in his gut when she clung to him and whispered something he recognizes now as _goodbye_ \--

“I loved her,” is all he can say, plaintively. A schoolboy making excuses.

It is the only excuse that matters; it is his heart, his body, his soul. He has always loved her, as long as she is a different woman each time, as long as she has not said it first.

Athos is silent. Aramis waits for -- he knows not what. A hand on his head in forgiveness; a kick to keep him down; a hand at his shoulder to strip him of his epaulette.

“I know,” Athos says, finally.

And then he waits until Aramis rises, and walks with him back to the palace, where their duty awaits.

* * *

“Well, that horrible business is over with,” the king says cheerily. “Of course Rochefort was making the whole thing up. Whose son would the dauphin be?” He frowns. “Too bad about that nursemaid. Marie, was it?”

“Marguerite, sire,” his wife says quietly. She looks involuntarily at the Musketeers. Aramis meets her gaze, his mouth twisting down in minute regret.

Anne doesn’t pause, continuing her sweep over the arranged soldiers and courtiers until she is looking at Constance. The newly married Madame D’Artagnan smiles gently at her queen.

Anne straightens as if imbued by new strength. “The sun is too hot, sire. Shall we retire for refreshments?”

Louis is all too happy to be persuaded to nibble at lunch, and he leads the way back into the palace. Anne follows him at the exactly correct distance, with an exactly respectable number of courtiers at her train.

She looks at Aramis once more as they pass. She does not smile, but neither is she frowning. Her eyes -- _so expressive_ , Aramis had once whispered to her, _keep them open, let me see you_ \-- are direct and kind. Her mouth is set in finality. She holds his gaze long enough to be understood; and then she returns to the palace.

What she had with Aramis became more than they two; Rochefort poisoned it and let it choke the court and then handed it to Marguerite to let her kill herself on it. What they had has outlived its sweetness.

The queen has been reckless with her heart. She has gambled much on love, and she has held to it selfishly when she knew she should let it go. She will never regret what she has done to follow her heart.

But for even one of her subjects, she would brave fire and storms. She would infiltrate a rebel camp. She would commit treason and collude with spies. She would let herself be killed.

It will be a long time before Anne will not regret that Marguerite died for a queen who never realized that Marguerite needed to be saved.

* * *

 

Aramis stops on the dirt path, and lets his brothers walk forward without him. When they realize he has stopped, they turn and wait.

“I must go,” he says. “I promised God that if I lived, I would devote myself to him.”

He swallows. It is harder to admit his other vow, the one he broke without seeing that he had made it: the promise of bodies and expectations and unrequited love ignored. “And -- Marguerite. Rochefort ensnared her, but if not for me she should never have been put in his path.”

 _Adele Boussett_ , the plaque had read. Still reads. It will stay in that wall until after Aramis himself dies; it will stay there longer than Adele was alive on God’s earth.

He does not know whether Marguerite will receive a plaque. He does not know her father’s name, or whether her family is the kind to pray for her sinner’s soul or erase her from their family Bible.

He does not know which name marks the crude cross over the grave of the woman he knew once as Isabelle and knew later as a stranger.

It is time to learn more, he thinks, about himself; about the women he loves; about the death which he chases on the battlefield and which haunts him in his romances.

He carries Marguerite in his heart as he sets down the path to the monastery. The time for forgetting love which has hurt him is done; he wishes to hold it close, to learn how to hurt no more lovers in turn.

Marguerite will not be so easily forgotten.


End file.
